I came across a column by Attorney Yang Jung-jin on the five virtues of a good lawyer, and I found myself stopping to sit with it for a long while. None of it was unfamiliar — humility, empathy, listening, managing stress, and being a good person. These are the kinds of things everyone has heard before, the kind of advice that draws easy nods of agreement.

And yet, writing like this has a way of catching you off guard. When words you thought you already knew come back around and land in front of you again, you realize they were never just information — they were always about how you live. No matter how much I've learned over the years, there are still habits that haven't taken root. There are still ways of being that I understand in my head but haven't yet worked their way into my hands, my voice, my expressions. Reading about what makes a good lawyer, then, ends up being an act of reading myself.

Humility: An Intellectual Stance, Not Just a Social Grace

The first virtue was humility — and what stayed with me wasn't the general idea of being modest, but the specific point about humility regarding one's own expertise. When you've spent years working under the label of "lawyer" or "expert," you can slip, almost without noticing, into a habit of certainty. "This is how it is." "That won't work." "My judgment is this." Of course, experts are supposed to make calls. Sometimes you need to be decisive. But decisiveness is not the same thing as being closed off.

A good expert is someone who states their view clearly while still leaving the door open to the possibility of being wrong.

When I think about why collaboration breaks down, it's rarely because someone lacked knowledge. It's usually because there was no room — no space for another perspective to get in. When there's no room for disagreement, discussion stops being persuasion and becomes a defensive standoff. On the other hand, the person who can momentarily set aside their own view tends to be the one who discovers something new. Legal questions, patent disputes, business decisions — the world rarely runs in a straight line. What looks right from one angle can look dangerous from another. That's why humility isn't merely a virtue. It's an intellectual discipline that leads to sharper judgment.

Empathy: Seeing the Person Behind the Case

The second virtue was empathy, and I think it matters especially for those of us who work in law and conflict. People don't come to a lawyer just looking for a legal answer. They come, almost always, already hurt. They arrive with a tangle of emotions — resentment, anxiety, anger, shame, fear — and they're looking for someone to help them sort it out. For someone in that state, leading with statutes, case precedents, and win probability can feel like a cold prescription when what they actually need is a human response first.

What's often most needed in those early moments is something simpler: getting in sync with where someone is emotionally. "That must have been incredibly hard." "It makes sense that you'd feel that way." These things can steady a person in ways that legal conclusions can't. Cases are ultimately resolved through documents, evidence, and legal arguments — but the people who bring those cases are human beings carrying emotion, memory, and wounds.

A good lawyer sees the case clearly — and never loses sight of the person.

Listening: The Craft of Hearing What Isn't Said

The third virtue was listening. Lawyers, generally speaking, are good talkers. We're trained to persuade through speech, argue through writing, and press our case through logic. But being a good talker and being a good listener are very different skills, and the latter is much harder. There's a difference between appearing to listen and actually listening. What people say carries more than the words on the surface — underneath those words are fears, expectations, and hesitations that often matter just as much, or more.

The Chinese character for "listen" — 聽 — is said to be composed of the elements for a king's ear, ten eyes, and one heart. I've heard that explained many times, and it still hits differently each time. Real listening isn't just keeping your ears open. It means watching someone's face, reading the texture of what they're saying, and resisting the urge to jump ahead to your conclusion. The moment an expert decides they already know where things are going, they start cutting people off. And sometimes the heart of a case is hiding in exactly the part of the story that got cut. Good listening isn't just a kindness. It's the most fundamental skill for accurately grasping the facts and the real issues at stake.

Self-Care: Part of Professional Ethics, Not a Perk

The fourth virtue was stress management through meaningful hobbies and personal care. There's a saying that lawyers absorb the stress of other people for a living — and that's not far off. The anger of clients, the attacks from opposing counsel, court deadlines, the pressure of filing windows, the risk of losing, the weight of responsibility — it keeps coming. Every case file is just a folder on your desk, but inside each one is someone's life, their money, their reputation, their relationships. Carrying that, day after day, grinds you down.

That's why I've come to think that managing stress isn't an indulgence — it's part of what it means to practice ethically. A person running on empty doesn't make good decisions for long. A burned-out person can't sustain the kind of attention and presence that clients in pain actually need. You need the kind of hobbies that get you moving — something physical, something that makes you sweat. And you need the quieter ones too — reading, music, whatever lets your mind go somewhere else for a while. Ultimately, the people who take care of themselves are the ones who can keep showing up for others. Resting so you don't collapse, emptying out so you don't cloud over — these are part of what professional competence actually looks like.

Character: What's Still Standing When Everything Else Has Faded

The fifth virtue was simply being a good person. It's the most ordinary thing to say, and probably the hardest to actually do. Skills can be built with study. Experience accumulates with time. But character doesn't grow on its own. If anything, it tends to calcify as the years go by — and a string of small successes can make things more dangerous, not less.

Being a good person doesn't guarantee financial success. The world isn't that tidy. Sometimes the sharpest elbows seem to get the furthest, at least for a while. But over the long run, people remember people. They remember how good you were at your job — but what tends to stick is how you treated them. The warmth or chill in a single sentence. The way you carried yourself in a difficult moment. The restraint you showed when the money was on the table. The honesty you held onto when it cost you something. All of that accumulates slowly into who you are.

A Good Lawyer and a Good Person Are the Same Thing

The essential point of Attorney Yang's column is straightforward: you can't separate being a good lawyer from being a good person. Legal expertise doesn't reach its full potential through knowledge alone. It only becomes what it's supposed to be — something genuinely useful to people — when it's paired with humility, compassion, real listening, the discipline of self-care, and a character that others can trust.

Reading this, I found myself turning the questions back on myself. Have I been humble enough? Did I really listen? Did I see the person behind the case, or did I stop at the case? Am I taking care of myself? And most of all — am I actually becoming a better person?

What to Do with the Years That Are Left

There are probably ten to twenty years of hard, meaningful work still ahead of me. There are things left to accomplish, responsibilities I still hold, and realities I'll have to push through. When I consider that the years behind me may now outnumber the ones still to come, there's a pull toward urgency that I know too well. But alongside that urgency, something else comes into focus.

The years ahead aren't just about doing more. They're about proving, every day, what kind of person I'm choosing to be.

When I was younger, I measured myself by results — by how precisely I understood something, how quickly I could reach a conclusion, how good the outcome was. Those things still matter. But time teaches you something else: what endures isn't only the outcomes. It's the disposition behind them. It's not just the skill, but the character of the person who holds it. It's not just the wins and losses, but what kind of face, words, and spirit you brought to the people across from you.

So I want to take these five lessons and make them habits — not just principles I cite. To work at being humble. To check in on the person in front of me before I check on the case. To listen more before I speak. To take care of myself so I don't fall apart. And above everything else, to keep chipping away at becoming someone worth being. People don't change on the strength of a single resolution — but repeated resolutions become habits, and habits eventually become a life. I believe that.

This is what I'm holding onto today. Whether you practice law, or work alongside law, or simply work in a field where knowledge and responsibility come with the territory — becoming a genuinely good professional and becoming a genuinely good person are the same project. And that project isn't finished yet.

For whatever years remain, I hope these lessons stop living in my head and start living in my hands. I want to move through the world a little lower, a little warmer, and a little more solid than I was before.

* This essay was written in response to Attorney Yang Jung-jin's column, "Five Virtues of a Good Lawyer" (Law Times, Korea).